


Feathers

by cruxifiction (vampirecaligula)



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character with Albinism, Cliche Storm, Fluff, Gratuitous Bitching About Academia, M/M, Paranormal, Romance, incidental lailah/zaveid, incidental zaveid/eizen, mikleo is incredibly gay, raine sage is also here, warning for nudity & rampant destruction of historical objects
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 14:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11233152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampirecaligula/pseuds/cruxifiction
Summary: This whole situation—him, the lonely and sexually repressed grad student, and the stark naked and surprisingly muscular intruder—was an adult film waiting to happen, and he was not even able toenjoy itthanks to academia.[Sorey is curious about the human world. Mikleo is curious about how this fits into his dissertation. Angel Sorey AU.]





	1. Chapter 1

> _“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”_
> 
> \--Matthew 19:24, the Bible, New International Version

Sorey peered over the edge of the cliff at the world below, a kaleidoscope of shining colors and cultures and humans more numerous than the stars in the sky. Behind him, Edna let out a put-upon sigh. Her wings rustled and cast the faintest of glowing shadows across Sorey, her aura warm and pleasant. “You’re never gonna make it. Dummy.”

Sorey could not tear his eyes away from the cities heaped upon cities. Even at this great distance the cacophony of daily life wafted into his ears with a kind of melody to it, energetic in its haste. “I bet I could,” he said, partly to egg her on. “Angels have gone to Earth before, right?”

“Only stupid ones.”

He finally glanced back at her with a lopsided grin. The light of Heaven stood behind her, casting a glow of celestial light around her silhouette and obscuring her features. Sorey didn’t need to see her face to know her lips were turned down in disapproval. “You did just call me a dummy,” he pointed out.

Sure enough, Edna tossed her head, the eyeroll so strong it took place on four different faces. “You have to have a _reason_ to go to Earth.”

“Isn’t curiosity reason enough?”

“Curiosity killed the cat, and you’re nothing but a kitten.”

Sorey closed his eyes and let the words roll over in his head. _Curiosity killed the cat_ had a rhythm to it that reminded him of the melody from Earth, but it struck him as unfinished. There was a catch at the end, a bit that pulled one’s tongue outward and insisted that something else was coming, but he couldn’t understand what. It was the same feeling the cat had probably felt, he reasoned, that had left it so curious.

Assuming a cat _could_ be curious. Perhaps that was why it had died? Experiencing an emotion that was fundamentally incompatible with its nature? The archangels used to use that sort of idea to explain why angels and humans could not understand one another. Sorey wouldn’t know; he had never known a cat.

“Hey, Edna,” he asked, “what’s a cat?”

“You think I know? It’s just something my brother would say to me.” She grimaced in distaste. “Don’t tell me you’re going to obsess over it now.”

“I won’t tell you,” Sorey replied, because he could not fathom ever lying to Edna. He kept staring over the cliff’s edge at the world below, watching it turn beneath the milky swirl of clouds and galaxies.

He was interrupted a moment later by Edna, who felt her point hadn’t been properly made. “You should forget about Earth,” she said. “You can’t just pop down to Earth and expect the archangels to be forgiving.”

“But forgiving is our _job_! Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much.”

“I don’t always worry,” she muttered. Then her shoulders sagged, and she turned on her heel, her four wings aligning in preparation for flight. “Fine. See if I care what you do. But when you’re stranded on Earth over your head and you can’t tell your elbow from your knee, don’t expect me to help you.”

She leapt from the ground and took off into the sky before he could reply, disappearing into a shower of photons. Sorey watched her go for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the world below.

Angels had been to Earth before. He’d heard the tales of knights and submarines and light technology that could reveal the deepest organs of the body. He’d heard of beautiful gardens and ancient temples, and creatures that lived so deep in the jungle that even humanity had only legends to describe them. They had all made it back somehow, right? You didn’t _have_ to Fall to go to Earth. Surely, you didn’t.

Sorey got to his feet, his robe falling back into place around him, and gazed once more over the edge of the world.

He wondered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thought i should branch out a bit from tales of symphonia [kissy emoji]
> 
> the whole reason for this fic is i asked my friends ‘how cheesy would it be for me to write a paranormal ya romance about angels’ and they replied ‘among the cheesiest’ ‘its only good if its gay’ ‘do it’ so i did it and here it is


	2. Chapter 2

> _“Some things are true, whether you believe ‘em or not.”_
> 
> \--Messinger, _City of Angels_

The air conditioning unit’s gentle hum was the only noise that broke the silence, and it too faded away as Mikleo’s senses adapted to the constant stimulus. He was used to the chilled air in the same way he was used to the thin layer of dust that lay across each exhibit, and the quiet rustle of paper as he researched and catalogued.

The book he’d retrieved was an ancient one, dating back at least one hundred and sixty years and written in script more formal than he was used to. The pages were stiff and yellow; Mikleo was concerned that if he touched them too much he would break them, but this tome was the only one containing detailed descriptions of the civilizations that once resided near the Galahad Ruins. The print was so small and of such poor contrast that his magnifying glass hardly did him much good. His eyes were dry and already ached from the strain of digging through the print, no matter how much effort he put in to reduce the glare from the page. He closed them in a brief attempt at rest, stretched his back, then checked his phone. No texts, no calls, a slew of emails from Student Life, and it was nearly 10 P.M.—definitely time to consider going home.

“Hey, Mikleo?”

“Yeah?”

Alisha’s heels clicked on the concrete floor as she approached. She’d always been soft spoken, but she knew how to make her presence felt; she was a good partner to have, neither elitist nor obnoxious, and she didn’t mind when it was too sunny for him to accompany her to digs. She brushed his shoulder when she got close and leant over, peering at his progress. “Have you made any headway on that find?”

“Not yet.” He pointed at the individual pieces of the vase he was examining that were spread across the mat. “I’ve almost got how it all fit together, but I’m still not sure how to identify it. It sure isn’t dating the same as the other artifacts you brought back.”

Someone else might have thought that the clay vase, shattered almost beyond recognition, was dull and uninteresting. But even now Mikleo could tell that the artifact had been finely crafted in its day, and that the unique markings, painful as they were to make out, would describe a story worth all the effort. That was the part he really loved about this job, even when the paperwork was arduous and the digs physically inaccessible. The stories told made everything worth it, in the end.

“Are you sure it was all in one piece when you found it?” He selected one of the larger bits and held it up. The clay was a dull green with black accents that would have shone hundreds of years ago, and even now it had an elegant touch. “These breaks are smooth. They seem pretty dated.”

Alisha picked up a glove from the box on the table and snapped it over her hand, then took the piece from him to examine it more. “It’s so strange,” she said. “I’m absolutely sure. It didn’t shatter until we transported it—the professor was tearing her hair out. I mean, she wasn’t _really_ tearing her hair out, but it felt like she might become close.”

“I know what you meant, don’t worry.”

“I even took a picture of it.”  

Mikleo snickered. “Of her tearing her hair out?”

Alisha scowled, an expression that did not belong on her face and couldn’t last more than a few seconds, but she gave it her best shot. “No! Of the vase. Wait a minute, I’ll see if I can find it.” She reached into her purse and dug out her cellphone, quickly unlocking it to flick through her picture library.

“A picture would be amazing,” he said in encouragement. A picture he could enlarge. A picture wasn’t in a thousand pieces and struggling to form a coherent whole. A picture would probably have glare and need color correction, but at least it would be backlit.

“I swear I have it,” she assured him, but she took much longer than a minute to search, the frown on her face deepening the entire time. “I am so sorry, Mikleo, but I guess I didn’t take one after all. I could have _sworn…_ ”

“It’s okay!” He smiled to reassure her. “I’ll figure it out, picture or no picture. It’ll be a challenge!”

“I suppose,” she said, though she still sounded disappointed. “Nothing lost, nothing gained.”

“Exactly.”

She tucked the cellphone back into her purse. “I’m going to go ahead and leave for the night. You should probably think about doing the same, okay?”

“Don’t worry about me, I do this all the time.”

“That’s why I worry!” She grinned and gave a brief wave. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mikleo.”

Mikleo waved back. “You too, Alisha. Hey, I think it’s supposed to be cloudy; maybe I’ll drop by the site!”

Alisha clapped her hands together. “That’s a great idea! You can take pictures of all our vases _before_ they break!”

"I plan to.”

“Good night!”

“Night!” he called, and turned back to his books and clay.   Alisha’s footsteps echoed again on the concrete until they took her through the heavy door. It creaked as it swung closed behind her, and then there was only Mikleo left alone with the hum of the air conditioning unit.

He flipped through a few more pages of the book, and referenced between that and the enlarged schematics he’d made of the markings on the vase. The work had been painstaking and taken him hours—in fact, he suspected he still wasn’t done—but even now he feared that the slightest inaccuracy would prevent him from knowing who this vase had belonged to, what was depicted in its ancient art. The last thing he wanted was to miss something.

Alisha had not been gone long, and Mikleo had only just settled back into the silence, when there was a clatter from the far corner of the room and a pained groan.

Mikleo leapt out of his seat, but did manage to keep his skin on. As he peered into the darkness he ran down the list of names that the voice—deep, _probably_ male, unfamiliar with the storeroom environment—could possibly belong to. All of the candidates had gone home a few hours ago. Security, maybe? They ought to still be down at the museum’s entrance, but they would be locking up for the night soon. If they’d let anyone in, wouldn’t they have told him? No, he grumbled to himself, they wouldn’t have. He was only an intern; no one was obligated to tell him anything.

Mikleo had put _self-directed_ and _leadership skills_ on his resume, and true to this description, he didn’t wait for the intruder to pay him attention. “Who is it?” he called into the stacks.

Old statues and crates leered back at him, some with fingers and fingerless limbs outstretched and forming eerie forests of wood and marble in the darkness. He couldn’t see the details on their faces, but several of them were bone-white, and it shone back at him threateningly.

There was a rustle and then the tell-tale sound of someone knocking into a statue, which was thankfully not followed by the sound of marble smashing on the floor.

“Hello? Do you need help?” Mikleo called again. “Can I at _least_ get a name?”

Then a figure emerged from the darkness on the far end of the room. “Um, no! I think I’m okay! A little bruised, but nothing to worry about,” he said with a laugh. Mikleo was struck to observe that he didn’t _seem_ to be wearing clothing—but Mikleo had been fooled by dim light and neutral clothes before.

“Okay, great. Who _are_ you?”

There was a slight rustle on the concrete floor as the figure turned. “Me?”

“I can’t fathom why I’d be asking myself that question,” Mikleo pointed out.

“Oh, that’s a good point!” The guy began to close the distance between them. There was not much sound—was he barefoot? In _this_ room? “I’m an angel.”

Great, so he’d be one of _those_ guys. Lie about your identity to confuse the blind kid. Haha, very funny, never seen that one before. “I meant, are you supposed to be here? Like, can I see an I.D.? Do you even _have_ a name? Professor Sage didn’t mention anyone else coming in tonight, and I’m supposed to be leaving in half an hour anyway.”

“I like to think that we’re all supposed to be here,” said the guy, once he was standing near Mikleo, “for one reason or another. Sometimes we don’t know why until the reason is set before us, but nothing ever happens by coincidence.” The guy paused, then snickered. “Just a little predestination humor for you there.”

It was easier to get a read on the guy closer up. He was taller than Mikleo, but not by much; his skin was a tawny brown, like the bark of trees in midsummer, and his smile carried an innocent laughter at his own joke. He seemed nice enough and wasn’t at all difficult to look at, but it still stood that he was here unannounced. Someone’s boyfriend, maybe, who was misdirected and lost? Mikleo wasn’t sure if anyone he knew was dating someone he didn’t.

Mikleo sighed. “You’re cute, Laplace, but this area’s for authorized personnel only.”

“My name isn’t Laplace, it’s Sorey!”

“Look, whoever you are. I don’t care. You can’t be in here.” Mikleo glanced downward to continue his assessment of Sorey, then backed up several steps in shock and horror. His brief glance, barely enough to _see_ anything but just enough to be scarred by what he saw, confirmed it: the intruder was not wearing a single article of clothing. Sure, Mikleo had been curious as to why he was the same warm brown all over, but he hadn’t questioned it _that_ much! He let out a strangled groan and covered his eyes. “Aren’t you _wearing something_?”

“Wearing?” Sorey sounded curious.

“Yes! You know, clothing! Skillfully tailored cloth meant to accentuate your silhouette and _hide your balls_!”

Mikleo’s cheeks were hot and flushed with embarrassment. They had _security cameras_ in here! If he was caught with a naked guy in the archival room of a national museum, his career would be over before it’d even begun. That would be it. No more graduate school, no more archaeology, no more unpaid internships with a boss who talked about ruins far more than could have been healthy. He probably wouldn’t miss the headache that was navigating accessibility, but even those were a small price to pay for a career he enjoyed.  

“I’m really sorry about this! I know I was wearing something before I got down here.” Sorey laughed nervously. “All my clothes before were woven from ultraviolet light and celestial intent, and neither one of those is really visible to humans, I guess.”

He was drunk. Or high. Amazingly devoted to live-action role playing. And none of those were necessarily _bad_ things, but there were rules about unauthorized personnel being in the museum at night, and if there was some kind of substance abuse taking place in the vicinity Mikleo was not sure how he felt about being in its presence. His first instinct would’ve been to ask for cards—someone to contact, or a place to take this guy, or at least to explain what was going on. But given the astounding lack of _pockets_ , it was not likely he’d find any of those, either.

“Oh, man.” Mikleo lamented to the safety of his hands. “Oh, god. Oh man.” This whole situation—him, the lonely and sexually repressed grad student, and a stark naked and surprisingly muscular intruder—was an adult film waiting to happen, and he was not even able to _enjoy_ it, thanks to academia.

“Kinda weird to pray to both, isn’t it? What’s this?”

Mikleo took his hands away just in time to see Sorey reaching for the shards of the clay vase.   “I’m not pray—oooh, put that down!”

The old clay clinked against the rest of the pieces as Sorey touched it, scattering a few of them out of their place. Mikleo continued to protest. “It’s _very_ old and _very_ delicate and—”

“Hey, I recognize it!” Sorey cried. “This was a wedding present Edna made thousands of years ago! Whoa, how do _you_ have it?”

“And you can’t touch it without gloves on!” Mikleo snatched the piece from Sorey’s hand and set it back on the table, his breath shaky as he struggled to put it back into place. He could tell by the rough feel of the edges where each was supposed to go, but some of the smaller ones escaped him. As soon as it was returned, he breathed a sigh of relief. “We found it outside of the city,” he explained, “only a few days ago. We have a dig up by the Galahad Ruins. I haven’t even gotten done describing it yet, much less _identifying_ it.”

“I can help with that! I can even read some of the markings still, although they’re pretty old.”

“You,” Mikleo said, “aren’t helping with _anything_.”

There was a brief silence. When Sorey had smiled earlier, Mikleo had briefly suspected basking in it was similar to standing in the warm, dim light of dawn. Sorey did not smile now. Instead his shoulders sagged, and the disappointment he felt was so palpable that Mikleo was cowed as well.

Then Sorey frowned.

“I’m sorry, I really don’t want to interrupt, but you’re bleeding,” he pointed out.

Sure enough, there was a sharp pain in the palm of Mikleo’s right hand. He took his eyes off Sorey long enough to look down and see a thin line of blood leaking from the laceration, slightly smeared from where the shard had rubbed against his skin.

“Oh, no,” Mikleo groaned. He’d forgotten _gloves_ , right after lecturing Sorey about the same issue. Had the blood gotten on the vase? Would that damage it? Usually that wasn’t something he worried about, but he’d always worn gloves before.

For the very first time, there was a shortness to Sorey’s words, a clipped manner that would indicate irritation in anyone else. “Can I _please_ help you?”

“Fine. Do what you want!”

Sorey took his hand.

In the time it took for Mikleo to be startled, to look at their hands and notice the curious juxtaposition between the palor of his skin and the warmth of Sorey’s, to glance from their fingers to Sorey’s eyes as they narrowed in concentration, and finally for Sorey to brush his other hand over the wound in Mikleo’s palm, the blood disappeared and the skin smoothed over as if it had never been cut.

“There,” Sorey said, proud of his handiwork as he returned Mikleo’s hand. He stepped back then and held both hands up in surrender. “All fixed. I won’t help with anything else, I swear.”

Mikleo rubbed at where the wound had been, unsure if he could trust his own eyes—they’d managed to fool him before, notably not more than ten minutes previous. But the pain was gone and so was the blood, leaving only the faint tingling sensation of tissue knitting back together. He scratched it absently. All the medical technology in Hyland and Rolance together couldn’t accomplish such a feat. Maybe in ten years, but not for free, and certainly not without the assistance of heaps of machinery. What Sorey had done should have been _impossible_ —had his hand ever been cut at all? Was it all a clever trick? He didn’t generally consider himself a skeptic; an archaelogist’s job was dogged pursuit of the truth, but with the understanding that sometimes the truth was the one thing you couldn’t explain.

The truth stood right before him, buck naked on a concrete floor and a grin that left Mikleo’s insides reeling.

_Oh, that’s a good point. I’m an angel._

“What do you know about the vase?” Mikleo ventured.

Sorey began to list aspects of it, eyes flicking upward as he searched his memory. “Well, my friend Edna made it, and she’s a seraph of vengeance, so you really don’t want to get blood on it or make a wish while standing in a circle or say the name of the king of Rolance from 1033 to 1054, but it’s broken now so it’s fine.”

“Why would she make a vase with such specific conditions?”

“It was a wedding present!”

“What kind of wedding present is _cursed_.”

“ _Edna’s_ wedding presents,” Sorey replied, as if it were obvious. Mikleo didn’t know this Edna, but angel or not, he decided it was better not to cross her. “I don’t remember who she made it for. It was a long time ago and kind of vague, and she was fairly secretive about it, too. But,” he went on, his eyes lighting up again, “I could probably find out, if I was given a little more context.”

There seemed to be a distinct logical fallacy in that declaration, and Mikleo pointed it out with a dry affect. “Wouldn’t you have to get back up to Heaven for that?”

Sorey shook his head. “Not necessarily. And it’s more fun to try and figure out what people do based on the evidence they leave, anyway—isn’t that kind of your job?” He pointed at Mikleo’s work station laid out across the table, as well as the various books, artifacts, and his laptop strewn about. “It’s gotten a little more advanced, but a long time ago people used to set up things like this outside and I got to see them better.”

He upheld his angel story with such nonchalance that, when he wasn’t mindful, Mikleo found himself accepting it without question. He didn’t have a _particular_ reason not to believe in angels, anyway. They were an integral part of Hyland’s history and mythos dating back thousands of years. Never having seen one himself didn’t mean they existed—Mikleo had never seen Rolance for himself, but if Rolance was a fictitious tale meant to scare children, then people went to great lengths to deceive themselves.

“Oh—no, it’s not my job,” Mikleo explained. “Not exactly. I’m still a student, although I’ve been one for so long that this basically—you know what? It’s not important.”

A sudden buzzing noise reverberated through the hall, startling Mikleo almost out of his skin. He snapped his gaze to its source; his phone still sat on the table from when he’d been speaking to Alisha, and it tried to get his attention with increasing dedication. He picked it up, unlocked the screen, and was met with an alarm set for precisely ten o’clock. _Pack up and go home!_ the alarm’s message read. Mikleo dismissed it with a scowl.

Seconds after he had done this, a second alarm set for a minute later popped up as well. _Seriously_ , it said, _you have been there for eight hours already._

“What’s going on?” Sorey asked.

“My past self is giving me a hard time,” Mikleo replied, dismissing the _second_ alert and checking to make sure he hadn’t set a third. (He had, because his past self was smarter than he was, or at least was running on more blood sugar.)

“You can time travel?”

“No, but apparently my foresight can.” He shoved the phone in his pocket and, though his irritation with the alarms did not abate, began to collect the rest of his things as well. He was rather loathe to leave Sorey, but it was true that he needed to get back. The prospects for dinner were not great after-hours, and if Alisha or the Professor found out he’d been staying so long he would never hear the end of it. “Do you have a place you can stay for the night? A… a church, or a friend, or something?”

Sorey shook his head. Mikleo sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperated anticipation of what he was about to do.

“Would you like to stay with _me_ for one night?” he offered. Then he quickly held up a finger. “One night _only_.”

Sorey’s eyes widened and his cheeks darkened. “Oh, no, I’ve already given you a lot of trouble—”

“Look, you’re never going to last out there if you don’t have somewhere to go. Ladylake isn’t exactly _easy_ to navigate; I’ve lived here for over six years and I still get lost sometimes. And anyway, you’d probably get arrested for public indecency before you got _anywhere._ ”

Was inviting Sorey to stay with him a bad idea? Absolutely. He could think of several reasons why. Sorey could, after all, have been a serial killer or kidnapper or loan collector with peculiar habits and preternatural powers, or something equally bad. But there was something in his expression, in the way he spoke and the way he smiled, that made Mikleo inclined to trust him.

“I guess I would be really grateful for it,” Sorey said, smiling. “I don’t want to indecent anywhere, much less arrested for it.”

“Great,” Mikleo said. He _almost_ managed sarcasm. Almost. He glanced around for something to keep Sorey from being arrested, and finally tossed him the long coat someone had left there months ago and never returned for. “Here, go ahead and take this. I’ll show you the way to my house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you accuse me of writing this just to complain about working in academia you will not be too far off
> 
> comments are love peace out <33


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